The usefulness of these entirely depend on the story you are trying to tell, it’s depth, and how long you want things to last.
If they have no impact on the outcome then argueably they have no place in a VN, but these sort of things can make the setting feel more alive; it’s an illusionary choice thing. They are an opportunity to not just have the same dialogue play through over and over again, which is not great.
The thing that makes a VN different from a story is how player choices affect the outcome. If there are too few choices, it leaves the player wishing they’d just had a story (or, say, four stories) to read, as the actual process of reading just one line of dialogue and having to mash a button to advance is distracting. Though at the same time, too many choices is also distracting.
Where they do have an impact, money, work, and skills are obvious things to add to slow down or gate progression. A player choosing which skills to advance is also an opportunity to adapt the story to the kind of character they want to play. How much of this you do really depends where you sit on the RPG vs. click-to-fat spectrum.
Food is one of those places where even an illusionary choice can be good. Some will be happy with a diet of only ever pizza, others will want more choice because they actually enjoy different foods (or want their character to eat stuff they personally would like), even if the in-game effect is the same. If the effect is only slightly different most won’t notice, but some will, and obviously with a bunch of game devs here, some will look at your code, some will min-max stuff.
With any of these mechanisms, you really need to signpost what effect they have. There are players who will always choose the fatter-faster option, and miss any subtlety you’ve included unless you make it clear that the fatter-slower options also have benefits.
Of course any choice you add is always more work, even if it is just for flavour. Some things can just be a point of pride for the developer though. If you get a kick out of coding more complex stuff, just do it.